Feds: Yep, Russia Hacked the DNC

Their motives, according to intelligence agencies? "To interfere with the US election process."

Federal officials today said they are "confident" that the Russian government is behind recent hacks of US political organizations like the Democratic National Committee.

"The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts," the Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a joint statement.

Their motive, the agencies said? "To interfere with the US election process."

Though Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied any involvement in hacks of US targets, the DHS and DNI say the scope and sensitivity of the breaches indicate that "only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities."

That includes a hack of the DNC and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), which serves as the official campaign arm of the Democrats in the House of Representatives. Emails stolen from DNC servers were released by Wikileaks on the eve of the Democratic National Convention this summer, while a hacker known as Guccifer 2.0 recently posted stolen docs from the DCCC online, though he/she erroneously said they were from the Clinton Foundation.

Wikileaks chief Julian Assange has refused to reveal who gave the DNC docs to the organization. But Russia is a likely suspect, as Putin is said to favor a Donald Trump presidency over a Hillary Clinton one for a variety of reasons.

However, US officials are not yet prepared to blame the Russian government for recent breaches of state election databases. Though the attacks "in most cases originated from servers operated by a Russian company...we are not now in a position to attribute this activity to the Russian government."

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At any rate, the US government maintains that a hack of election results would be very difficult due to the "decentralized nature of our election system in this country and the number of protections state and local election officials have in place.

"States ensure that voting machines are not connected to the Internet, and there are numerous checks and balances as well as extensive oversight at multiple levels built into our election process," they said.

Still, DHS is offering state election boards "cyber 'hygiene' scans of Internet-facing systems" as well as risk and vulnerability assessments if officials request them.